While Thenio and Eteon talked, Ariom mostly stayed silent, looking through the wooden figurines. He also glanced from time to time at the carving that Eteon was working on, which was rapidly taking on the shape of a cockatrice with outstretched wings. He was obviously using some kind of magic in the process, because the ordinary-looking knife was cutting through the wood like it was custard.

Ariom hated to admit it, but he couldn't tell exactly what Eteon was doing. Logically, he had to be coating the knife with magic power somehow, but it was so finely controlled that it wasn't visible, even using magesight. Ariom had worked hard on his magic control since he was a child, and he was normally confident in his abilities, but this left him feeling a bit chagrined.

Eteon's skill at carving was also phenomenal. Even working quickly and not using any kind of reference, the shape of the cockatrice looked perfect, with an amazing level of detail in the face and feathers. Was Eteon actually a member of the Forest Clan, disguised as a human? Ket'qe was the only place Ariom had ever seen woodworking skills on this level before. But...no, probably not. That would take some serious illusion magic, and he couldn't detect any. Plus, Thenio had said he'd known Eteon for more than a decade, and Forest People rarely left Ket'qe for more than a year or two at a time. A wood or metal affinity, maybe? Those types tended to be associated with sculpting. Or crystal? Pure crystal mages were very rare and in high demand, so that could explain why Eteon didn't want to reveal his magic abilities.

Well. Whatever he was, he was extremely skilled. It was no wonder Thenio was so good at drawing and engraving, if he'd grown up hanging around this guy.

Ariom looked over at the boy in question, who was currently telling Eteon about meeting Seyli and Tava.

"She really knows a lot about magic beasts. Especially dragons. She said she'd bring some of her anatomy textbooks the next time they come over so I can study them to help with drawing."

"She sounds like a nice girl." Eteon glanced at Ariom and then gave a knowing smile. "Is she cute?"

"Huh?" Thenio looked startled. He shot a worried look at Ariom, the tips of his ears turning slightly red. "That...well...um...I guess?"

Ariom raised an eyebrow. Just who did that kid think he was fooling? The look on his face when he saw Seyli for the first time had been painfully obvious.

Thenio was spared from further embarrassment by the arrival of Uncle Bero and the familiars. It seemed they'd finally managed to detach themselves from the group of children.

"Hi, Thenio's friend!" Iggy called out, jumping down from Uncle Bero's arms and bounding over to the edge of the blanket. "What are you making?"

Eteon paused his work on the partially finished carving and held it up for the little dragon to see.

Iggy tilted his head. "A cockatrice? Humerus, Uncle Bero, look! It looks like Alula when she's wearing feathers!"

"Oh? It really does." Uncle Bero moved closer to look at the carving. Then he frowned. "Were you already working on that before we came?"

Ariom shook his head. "I asked him to make it. He just works crazy fast."

Uncle Bero raised his eyebrows. "Really? That's impressive...."

Eteon chuckled a little and lowered the cockatrice to start carving again. "Not that impressive. I've been doing this for a long time—that's all. I was pretty terrible at it when I first started."

"He used to live in Ket'qe," Thenio added in. "He learned how to carve wood from a friend there."

Oh, so there was a connection to the Forest People. Interesting....

Uncle Bero sat down and joined Ariom in picking out figurines. Humerus went over and started looking at the jointed dolls. And Iggy jumped up onto Thenio's shoulder so he could watch Eteon carve.

"So what else have you been up to?" Eteon smiled playfully at Thenio. "Besides making friends with cute girls who know a lot about dragons."

Thenio scowled a little, obviously not happy that Eteon had brought that subject up again. "Well, I finally got to do some real magic assistant work a couple of days ago. Though it wasn't anything very hard. Just serving refreshments when some people came to talk to Ariom about maybe hiring him for a job."

"Well, you need to start somewhere. What kind of job was it?"

Thenio opened his mouth to speak but then paused. He glanced uncertainly in Ariom's direction, as though asking how much he was allowed to say.

Ariom hesitated briefly. It wasn't something they could discuss freely, of course. But it shouldn't hurt to mention information that was already publicly available.

"I can't give you details, but it's a job for the Royal Guard," he said finally. "They want help analyzing some enchantments. It's part of an investigation involving the Order of the Ravener."

As soon as he said the name, Eteon's knife stopped moving, and a dark shadow passed over his face. Ariom felt a chill run down his spine. At the same time, Iggy suddenly pricked up his ears, looking alert.

But the one who reacted most was Humerus. He let out a whimper and flattened himself against the blanket, head lowered submissively.

Eteon turned to look at the cowering revenant. "Ah. Sorry, Humerus," he said with a small, apologetic smile. "I lost my composure for a second there. But you don't need to worry. I wouldn't hurt one of Thenio's friends." His smile faded. "It's just...I really...really don't like the Order of the Ravener...."

Everyone was silent for a moment. Humerus had relaxed his posture slightly, but he was still crouched down, looking up at Eteon with an anxious expression. Iggy was also watching him closely. Ariom and his uncle exchanged glances. Judging from the grim look on his face, Uncle Bero had also felt that frightening aura just now.

The only one who seemed unaffected was Thenio. He was looking around at the rest of them with a confused expression. His magic power was only slightly unsettled.

Had Eteon managed to direct that sudden wave of magic away from him? In that split second?

Scary guy.

Ariom glanced back at Eteon. "Does that mean you've had some kind of run-in with the Order before?"

"Yes...you could say that." Eteon stared down at the nearly finished cockatrice for a moment. Then he slowly started carving again. "So if there's anything I can do to help your investigation, feel free to ask."

Ariom looked at him for a moment. Then, on impulse, he asked, "Well, then...can you tell me how to break a charged magic trap formation while it's under stasis magic, without setting it off?"

Eteon paused his carving once again and tilted his head thoughtfully.

There was a long silence.

Just when Ariom was starting to feel ridiculous for asking a woodcarver for help with an enchanting problem, Eteon lifted his knife and held it out in front of him.

"It's hard to give you a specific recommendation without seeing the enchantment," he said slowly. "But you might find this technique helpful. Watch closely."

Ariom blinked and then activated his magesight and stared at the knife. He saw Eteon release several tendrils of magic power that wove together in an intricate pattern along the very edge of the knife blade.

Ariom frowned, trying to understand what he was seeing. It was only after Eteon had repeated the process several more times that his eyes finally widened in comprehension.

"That's...an inversion of stasis magic?"

"Very good." Eteon nodded. "That's what you need, isn't it? A way to cut through the stasis magic without undoing large sections of it? Using a medium like this knife allows you to concentrate the effect on a single line, which will give you better power efficiency and keep you from having to disturb too much of the trap formation at once. Well, you might need to experiment and adapt it a little." He gestured at the wooden cockatrice. "I use a variation of this technique to help me carve wood more quickly. But you need to be careful with it. It will basically disintegrate whatever it touches, so you could easily slice a finger off if you're not paying attention."

Ariom frowned. "Where did you get that particular formation? I've seen physical disruption magic before, but never anything quite like that."

"I used to travel around a lot. I've picked up a lot of odd techniques from different places."

"And you're seriously using that kind of advanced magic just to carve wooden animals?" Ariom asked, feeling stunned at the very thought.

"Only when I'm in a hurry," Eteon said with a shrug. "I do it without magic most of the time. You get lazy if you take shortcuts too often."

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"You really are a monster...."

Eteon smiled pleasantly. "I'll take that as a compliment."

----------------------------------------

As soon as the carriage came into view of Thenio's house, the front door opened and an excited Kleyo ran out. He stopped at the end of the front walk, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet while he waited for the carriage to come to a halt. Thenio could see him staring intently at the horse golem.

When Thenio stepped out of the carriage, Kleyo rushed over and hugged him tightly around the waist.

"Hey there, buddy," Thenio said, smiling and ruffling his hair. "Have you been good while I was gone?"

"Yeah! I've been studying really hard and helping Lem with the cooking!" Kleyo said, beaming up at him. Then he let go and turned to Ariom, who had just exited the carriage. "Hey, it's okay if I look at the golem, right?"

Before Ariom could answer, Kleyo ran to the horse golem and started circling around it, examining it from all angles.

"Thenio told me you had a really nice golem carriage. He sent me a drawing of it. And he was right! This horse is really, really good! Did you make it? It uses Adarin-style socket joints, right? The movement is really smooth and quiet...you must have good lubricant. Maybe something like kocea root oil? Or powdered jaskalt? The action looks really good. What's the tendon material? The skeleton is probably Eskyan steel, right? I've read that's the best for carriage golems, since it has high impact resistance, and it's not a problem if it's heavy. What kind of magic crystals...?"

Ariom stood in the open door of the carriage with his mouth slightly open, seemingly frozen by the unending barrage of questions.

Thenio gave an awkward laugh. "Sorry. He gets like that when he's excited about something. And he really likes golems."

There was the sound of flapping wings, and Iggy landed on Thenio's shoulder. "That's Thenio's little brother?"

"Yeah, that's my youngest brother, Kleyo."

"Kleyo?" Iggy tilted his head, watching while Kleyo crouched down to examine the golem's feet. Then he raised his nose and sniffed the air. "He smells kind of like Thenio. His magic is different, but it's a little bit the same."

"Is it?" Thenio frowned. "He has a wood affinity, though, doesn't he?"

Although neither of his brothers had shown any signs of unusual magic instability, the Royal Academy had tested both of them, just in case they also turned out to have rare affinities.

Kleyo actually did turn out to be a little unusual, though not to the same extent as Thenio. The basic test had shown he had a metal affinity, but a blood analysis had shown a faint life tertiary in addition to the earth primary and crystal secondary, which meant it was actually a wood affinity.

This was a little odd, since there hadn't been any kind of crystal or life mages in their family, at least not in the past several generations. But Kleyo was thrilled, since wood was a fairly rare affinity that was especially desirable for golem-making.

Lem had refused to do a blood analysis for some reason. But he took the basic test several times and consistently tested as a clay affinity each time. Since their parents' affinities were clay and earth, this was a perfectly normal result, so the academy wizards gave up trying to persuade him to do any further testing.

"There's more to a person's magic than just their affinity." Bero had just come around the carriage, with Humerus perched on his arm. "It's normal for siblings to have some similarities in their magic signatures, even if they have different affinities. That's probably what Iggy is picking up on." He turned to Ariom. "Why don't you stay here and chat about golems for a bit? We'll go inside."

Ariom turned to look at him with a slightly panicked expression.

Bero sighed. "Just pretend you're talking to Iggy." He glanced over to where Kleyo was still happily examining the golem and chattering about his findings to no one in particular. "It looks like they have similar personalities."

Thenio nodded in agreement. There was definitely a resemblance there.

"That's...." Ariom made an uncomfortable expression and then looked at Iggy. "What about Iggy and Humerus? Do you two want to stay out, too?"

"I want to see Thenio's room!" Iggy said, swishing his tail. "Thenio told us that he has a lot more drawings in his room here that we can look at!"

"Right. I want to see Thenio's drawings, too," Humerus chimed in, nodding.

"Oh." That obviously wasn't the answer Ariom was hoping for. He glanced uncertainly back at Kleyo and sighed. "Well...fine."

Thenio gave him a sympathetic smile and then went over to his brother, who was now kneeling on the ground examining the underside of the horse golem. "Kleyo, come here for a minute."

Kleyo looked at him curiously and then obediently crawled out and came over to where Thenio was standing. When he got closer, he noticed the little black dragon sitting on his brother's shoulder, and his eyes lit up. "Oh, that's Iggy! He looks just like the drawing you sent!"

"Hi, Thenio's little brother!" Iggy waved at him. "Do you like our metal horse?"

"Yeah! It's really good!"

Maybe it was because he'd been spending so much time around dragons lately, but Thenio felt like he could almost see a tail waving enthusiastically behind his brother.

"Hey, Kleyo, this is Ariom." Thenio gestured in Ariom's direction. "I need to go inside to pack up some of my things, but he's going to stay and tell you about his golem. Can you bring him inside when you're done? And remember to be polite to him, okay?"

Kleyo gave Ariom a broad smile. "Okay!"

They left the reluctant Ariom and enthusiastic Kleyo together and walked over to the house, where Thenio's parents were waiting for them at the front door.

"Good to see you again," Thenio's father said, smiling at Bero. "This is my wife, Siora."

"It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Bero Denifor, Ariom's uncle. And this is my familiar, Humerus."

Thenio hadn't mentioned the fact that Humerus was a revenant in any of the messages he'd sent to his family over the past couple of weeks, and after some discussion, they'd decided not to bring it up during today's visit, either. Thenio knew his parents weren't that fond of animals or magic beasts in general, and he was pretty sure that his mother would feel seriously uncomfortable if she knew there was a spectral beast in the house. He could already see her fidgeting a little with nervousness just from speaking to Bero.

"Why don't we go inside and chat for a bit while Thenio is packing up the things he wants to take back to Ariom's house?" Bero said with a pleasant smile. "I'd like to tell you a little about what we've learned over the past couple of weeks."

They went inside. In the entryway, Bero stopped and handed Humerus over to Thenio before following his parents into the parlor. Thenio carried both familiars up to his bedroom, taking a bit of a scenic route to let them look around the house.

"What's that room?" Iggy asked, looking curiously at a closed door on the second floor as they went past.

Thenio paused. "Oh, that's Lem's room. My other brother. He's probably working on his homework. Let's not disturb him. He should know we're here, so he'll come out if he wants to visit."

Which he most likely wouldn't. But Thenio didn't say that out loud.

"How come your room is up in the attic when everyone else's is downstairs?" Humerus asked as they reached the top of the stairs, looking around with a discontented expression. The landing had bare white walls and a plain wood floor, an obvious contrast to the heavily decorated rooms below.

"Well...I used to have a room on the second floor. But it got damaged in one of my magic explosions. My parents had me move up here while we were waiting to get it repaired. We were using this as a magic practice room at the time, so it already had some reinforcement enchantments. And then...well. Somehow I just never ended up moving back downstairs again. But it's kind of cozy up here, so I didn't really mind."

Humerus didn't look entirely convinced by those words, but he didn't pursue the subject any further.

Thenio's bedroom was the same as he'd left it, aside from a few of his books being scattered around. That was probably due to Kleyo coming up here to read. In addition to Thenio's old sketchbooks, Kleyo liked looking through his magic textbooks. Thenio had given him permission to come use whatever books he wanted as long as he put them back and didn't make a mess. It looked like he'd...mostly listened.

Well. He was only seven years old, after all.

"You can go ahead and look around," he told the familiars as he let them down onto the bed. "Just try not to damage anything, okay? I'm not Ariom, so most of my things don't have reinforcement charms on them. Humerus, it's fine to move things around with your magic while we're in this room. Kleyo's usually the only member of my family who comes up here, so he's the only one who might see. And I don't think you being a revenant will bother him at all. He'll probably just try to get you to go to his room and make all his dolls move around." He went to the bookshelf and pointed at a row of books with dates handwritten on the spines. "These are my old sketchbooks. You can look at any of them you want."

The two familiars started happily exploring the room while Thenio opened up his closet and began going through his clothes. Now that he knew he had plenty of storage space in his new living place, he didn't have to be as selective in his packing as he'd been the first time around, so he was planning to take most of his things with him this time.

When he turned around with an armful of clothing, he was a little surprised to see Iggy and Humerus both sitting on his desk looking up at the large sheet of paper that was hanging on the wall over it. It was a chart that Thenio had made when he was studying for the Royal Academy entrance exam. It had a number of basic magic formations drawn on it. In order to make them easier to memorize, he'd created stylized versions in different animal shapes.

"Did Thenio draw these pictures?" Iggy asked when he noticed Thenio watching them.

"Yeah, I did. Oh...are you wondering why the formations have mistakes in them?" Thenio smiled awkwardly, remembering what Ariom had said about Iggy's ability to analyze enchantments. "I just made those to help me learn the different formation types. That's why they're in animal shapes. Remembering which animal goes with which formation type helps me remember how they're constructed. They're not supposed to actually function, so I cheated in a few places to make them look better."

"No, they're good! They're really good pictures!" Iggy said, waving his tail. "When we go home, we should paint pictures together, okay? I'll tell Ariom to give you some magic paints. I'm really good at painting with magic paints, you know? I'll show you how! Thenio will be good at using magic paints, too!"

"He can't use magic paints," Humerus said. "Not the kind you use, anyway. They emit magic. He can't be around things that emit magic, remember?"

"Oh." Iggy's ears drooped sadly.

"Uh...what exactly do you mean by 'magic paints?''" Thenio asked uncertainly. There were a lot of different inks and paints you could use for enchanting, but he didn't know of any that emitted magic. Inscriptions needed to conduct magic, not emit it.

"He means elemental paints," Humerus explained. "You use them for special kinds of enchantments." He looked at Iggy. "Well, actually what he uses are fake elemental paints. Real ones are kind of dangerous. But Iggy really likes them, so Ariom made him a special kind that have a lot less magic, so they're safer to use. Probably not safe for you, though."

Elemental paints? Thenio had heard the term before, but he didn't know much about them. There were actually a lot of different enchanting styles. But the Royal Academy only taught standard enchanting, so that was mostly what Thenio had studied.

"Iggy might be onto something, though," Humerus said thoughtfully, turning back to the chart on the wall. "Have you ever thought about learning aesthetic enchanting?"